Winter Sostice.

It's so good to know that although the worst of the winter is still ahead the days will now be lengthening. A little more light each day. No wonder neolithic man built Stonehenge to mark the day. I've spent a lot of the afternoon reading my blog from 5 years ago as I begin the task of updating my family journal. I began writing it in a beautiful hobbit journal in '96 but somehow it got abandoned in favour of the blog. I'll see how far I get this holidays. Anyway, 5 years ago we were cut off in our valley by snow and ice and then the oil ran out and the water pipes froze. It was an adventure but I'm glad it only lasted a few weeks. Today it's still mild with wind and rain that began at 9.00 this morning and hasn't let up since.

We're having beef stew for Christmas dinner and while I would be happy just to throw everything in the pot and hope it turns out all right when Peter suggested that we make our own stock using oxtail I thought I had better make the effort. I also boiled up some beetroot that a friend had grown which we need for the Christmas Eve bean salad. Then I got on with my knitting. I've finally got confident enough to remove the blu tack from the needles though I work over the table so the needles can't drop out. 

While I was being all housewifely a delivery man brought and enormous box with a new office chair for Peter. Since he kindly bought me a new pc I offered to treat him to a new chair for his study. In all the years we have been here we've made do with chairs Peter has brought home from work when surgeries he worked at were being upgraded. The chair I'm sitting on came from a skip at the back of M&S in town. He chose this one as it can be adjusted in all sorts of ways and looks to be very comfortable. I had to assemble the chair which was fine apart from one pair of bolts that joined the back to the arm rests which had already been bolted to the seat. It took some huffing and puffing to align everything but I got there in the end.